Sulphuric acid! Not recomended by FK for lot's of good reasons! Wouldn't want any newbies or casual onlookers thinking this is normal. Best to be safe

Thanks Violet, this was more informative than the book I was reading last night.

After reading that article again that Violet posted, I am starting to be swayed toward Cichlids now providing I can get a good base of variety that will co-exist. First worry is will they go for the x-ray tetras if I go for them?

Secondly, can I keep a variety of Cichlids at all? Still much reading to do at this point but even before my tank arrived I was looking at Blue Rams and such, as I want colour in the tank Cichlids seems the logical choice especially with the water readings where I am.

Hi Chris,

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I'm afraid if you go for hard water cichlids you won't really be able to keep anything else with them.

They are all aggressive fish and only suited to being kept with fish of their own kind.

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Absolutely, yes, but there are some rules you have to follow with Cichlids.

Hardwater Cichlids mostly originate in the African Rift Lakes - Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika being the major two sources.

When choosing which species to keep, you need to stick with species from one lake as the water chemistry and lifestyle habits vary too much between the lakes for fish to be combined.

With Lake Malawi there is a furher division between Mbuna and Haps which also can't be mixed.

Both lakes provide a wide-ranging selection of fish, but the combinations need to be chosen carefully as they are very territorial and aggressive.

The first thing would be to look and see which lake's inhabitants appeal to you and then get into the finer details from there.

Rams, by the way wouldn't be an option as they are from South America and are soft water fish.

HTH

Further to recent posts, please note the FK caveats to this linky

Whilst the link and article generally gave some helpful info at a time when info was sparse on the net, FK usually add 2 caveats.

Firstly - Tetra. The phrase 'tolerant tetras' usually sends shivers down any FK advisers spine. X Ray Tetra/ Black Emperor Tetra for example, have shown to be 'slightly' longer lived in higher pH, GH but that doesn't mean they actually thrive.

Secondly - Adding rain water. Not recommended by FK. Goodness knows all sorts of pollutants/muck/bugs or contaminants is in that if you store it.

At one time I lived in a hard water area and used to collect rain water from my garage roof. I collected it in a white barrel so that I could see if it was clear before using it; and let it rain heavy for about 30 minutes before collecting. After collection I filtered the water with a diatamous earth filter before using. Then in 1976 we had a long dry summer and I ran out of rain water (I had about 60 tanks going in the fish house) so I built myself a water softening unit using ion and anion exchange resins. This worked well.

Now many years later and maybe a bit wiser I again live in a very hard water area; however we only keep fish that will live happily in my tap water. We change half the water every week by pumping the water out with an electric pump and filling up with the hose pipe on the outside coldwater tap (summer and winter).

We only keep a few tanks now but have bred a number of species successfully both egg layers and live bearers in the local tap water. At present we only breed angel fish.

My point in all this rambling is don't get too hung up on water PH and hardness.

Don't want to appear disagreeable, but in general although some fish can survive outside their normal range of pH and hardness, but they do need to be kept in the right parameters to truly thrive.

That's the main purpose of this site really - providing information that will give fish the optimum conditions to be healthy, happy and to thrive (given that they're living in tanks).

For that reason we wouldn't ever advise keeping fish outside their preferred range.